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Think of Earth’s water cycle as a well-choreographed dance, and climate change has started remixing the music. Some places are now drenched with extreme rain and flooding, while others are drying up under record-breaking droughts.

Between 2015 and 2020, Cape Town, South Africa, faced a severe drought so extreme that officials warned the city was nearly out of water, calling it “Day Zero.”

Scientists have puzzled over whether these events are just natural hiccups or driven by human-made climate change. Models suggest warming plays a role, but models aren’t the whole story, so researchers are digging into Earth’s past to see what history might reveal.

In a new study, published in Nature Communications, researchers analyzed ancient plant matter preserved in a column of sediment drilled off the coast of South Africa. By analyzing hydrogen isotopes inside the plants from the rainfall, they could trace what the climate was like long ago.

New technology to monitor near-real-time drought conditions

They focused on a time called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, about 1.25 to 0.7 million years ago, when Earth’s ice ages and atmosphere changed dramatically.

They found that shifts in global air circulation, especially the Hadley cell (which moves air between the equator and 30° latitude), caused swings between wet and dry periods in Southern Africa, similar to the extreme drought Cape Town faced during its “Day Zero” crisis.

The study shows that Earth’s climate has dramatically shifted before, triggering drought patterns like those seen in Cape Town’s “Day Zero” crisis. These ancient changes mirror today’s extremes, pointing to global climate change as a key driver behind such events, both in the past and now.

EES graduate Claire Rubbelke ’25 Ph.D. said, “One big question I’m left with is whether these short droughts—and the Day Zero drought was relatively short-lived—will become more prolonged and eventually a permanent feature of the regional climate. The fact that past droughts appear in the sediment record suggests they persisted for many years.”

Drought might not be the driver behind the disruption of Maya society

In her future postdoctoral work, Rubbelke aims to study rainfall patterns along Africa’s eastern coast to compare them with past changes in the southwest. She hopes to uncover how shifting precipitation influenced early human evolution, especially in regions like the Cradle of Humankind. By examining how changes in vegetation and water sources affected where hominin species lived and thrived, her research could shed light on the environmental pressures that shaped our ancient ancestors.

Journal Reference:

1. Rubbelke, C.B., Bhattacharya, T., Farnsworth, A., et al. Southern Hemisphere subtropical front impacts on Southern African hydroclimate across the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Nat Commun 16, 3501 (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58792-5

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• A spacecraft called the Nyx capsule recently crashed in the Pacific Ocean after the landing parachutes failed to deploy.

• The capsule carried cargo including cannabis and human remains, all of which were lost in the crash.

• After apologizing to the families who lost their loved one’s remains, the company responsible for the spacecraft said this “partial success” should serve as an important learning opportunity for future reusable space flight missions.

As part of a rideshare mission with SpaceX, the Nyx capsule launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 23rd. The next day, after successfully re-entering the atmosphere on June 24th, the capsule crashed into the Pacific Ocean and lost some unexpected cargo: cannabis and human remains.

The Nyx capsule and its launch was part of the program “Mission Possible” led by a German start-up called The Exploration Company (TEC). The launch marks TEC’s second spacecraft to reach orbit in under four years.

Now, the cannabis plant matter and seeds weren’t for recreational use—they’re part of an open-source citizen science project called Martian Grow. The project seeks to understand the effect of microgravity on germination and resilience, potentially shedding light on how life could survive in non-terrestrial environments.

The human remains, however, were on the capsule for a much more… wholesome reason: to memorialize loved ones. Celestis—a Texas-based tribute company—provided ashes from over 160 deceased individuals to make the trip into space (sadly, this is not the first time Celestis lost a payload, the first being in 2023 when a rocket carrying a late NASA astronaut’s ashes exploded over New Mexico).

“We apologize to all our clients who entrusted us with their payloads,” TEC wrote in a statement. “We thank our teams for their hard work and their dedication to success. We have been pushing boundaries in record time and cost. This partial success reflects both ambition and the inherent risks of innovation. Leveraging the technical milestones achieved yesterday and the lessons we will extract from our ongoing investigation, we will then prepare to re-fly as soon as possible.”

The founder and CEO of TEC, Hélène Huby, also apologized for the lost cargo, suggesting the mission is something the space tech world can grow from.

“We all hoped for full success; partial success is often part of the road for those who take risks and push boundaries to change the world positively.” she said in a press release. “I take full responsibility and present my apologies to our customers for not achieving full success.”

TEC explained in the press release that the spacecraft crashed because the landing parachutes failed to deploy. In the same release, the company stated the parachute system wasn’t drop-tested—a risk that “lower costs, shorten development time, and yield a deeper understanding of the vehicle with each flight,” according to TEC. The parachute model had previously been used on SpaceX’s Dragon.

According to TEC, the recent setback won’t stop their mission—in fact, it’s only helped progress it.

“We are continuing our journey, eager to implement these learnings in our next vehicle,” Huby said in the press release. “We will learn from Mission Possible and improve, together as a team. I express my profound gratitude to The Exploration Company’s team members who are demonstrating outstanding solidarity, resilience, and commitment to the success of our mission.”

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